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Nobody's Perfect by Anthony Lane

Paperback pick of the week

If you want intelligence in America, you have to import it. Or so you might be forgiven for thinking, when you look at the role that Anthony Lane, an Englishman, plays as the film critic of The New Yorker. There is something distinctly English about the cut of his jib - a well-mannered lack of moral earnestness, a certain detached flippancy, a calm superiority in the face of dumb popular culture - and it clearly goes down very well. This is a thick white slab (750-odd pages) of Lane's collected criticism, ranging across films and books to profiles of people. He is equally at home writing about Nabokov as asking "What is the point of Demi Moore?" and he draws lightly on considerable reserves of culture. Not many writers could bring Molière in to make a genuinely illuminating point about Sergeant Bilko, but Lane pulls it off with ease. And in case